By Barry Rubin
“Saddle up,” said the colonel. For those with horses that was a literal order but for my Third U.S. Regiment, we marched across the Gettysburg hills. It’s July 3, 2011, but feels like July 3, 1863.
A Union army uniform, dark blue heavy wool jacket, light blue wool pants, forage cap, and heavy Springfield musket, is not the best garb for a humid 90 degree heat, especially accompanied by heavy shoes, cartridge bag, full canteen (in my case, ice tea), huge bayonet, and haversack for personal possessions, .
The artillery opened up on both sides with a deafening roar and pre-placed explosions blew up as “shells” hit. Thousands of spectators watched from the grandstands. Up to our detail rode a captain with orders to join dismounted cavalry skirmishers between the lines, hold off the Confederates as long as possible, then fall back to the reserves. If the Confederates broke through, we’d charge and push them back.
Pickett’s charge is one of the Civil War’s most dramatic moments. At Gettysburg, the two armies came together accidentally. On the first day, the Confederates drove the outnumbered Federals back through the town.
The problem was that more Union forces were arriving and taking up awesome defensive positions on hills and ridges. Unable to break through on July 2, General Robert E. Lee made the greatest mistake of his military career: deciding to send his fresh troops—mostly in General George Pickett’s division–against the enemy’s center, believing he could break that line, destroy the Union army, and win both battle and war.
The central factor shaping the American Civil War and killing tens of thousands of men was that it was a war fought with late nineteenth century weapons but early nineteenth century (Napoleonic) tactics.
Guns had improved so much that, even without machine guns, charging troops armed even with muskets (mine is the standard 1862 Springfield) and improved artillery was suicide. Yet infantry was arrayed in tight formations, men marching shoulder to shoulder making perfect targets.
No number of history books can explain the Civil War better than standing in a double line, shoulders touching, while a similar group 200 yards away shoots at you. You can’t run, duck, or hide while the other side fires very large bullets at you.
We were ordered.to join the Third Pennsylvania Cavalry (dismounted) on the skirmish lines. We knelt down in a slight depression in the ground—skirmishers being allowed to do that—as the Southerners formed up. Just as precisely 100 years, a Confederate bagpiper played, “Scotland the Brave”: Pickett’s men yelled, “Virginia!” gave the Rebel Yell and several hundred of them headed straight toward me.
We spent a weekend in Gettysburg a few years ago. It is difficult to contemplate a battle where low-speed projectiles caused such terrible physical damage and the only treatment available for most of the injuries was amputation with no anesthesia. I found myself wishing the commanders could have been a bit more creative in their thinking and devised a tactic other than having men line up in rows in the open and be sitting ducks for the other side. The bravery was as awesome as the carnage was terrible.
We just took the kids there last month – over 100 degree temperature (felt like home). It was awe inspiring! Very moving to walk across the fields and climb the rocky hills knowing how much bloodshed had occurred there and why.
It was overwhelming to understand the reality of those few days. I felt such anger at Pickett and the other commanders for marching those young men into such hell. Yes, I know that was what they were trained to do, but I’m all for saving as many soldiers as possible. Guerrilla warfare for me. Such brave souls to have walked directly into sure death!
As my family stood there, looking down from Little Round Top, we wondered if Obama and his goons had ever walked that field or any other battlefield in America? Had they spent time reading the Founder’s documents or Abraham Lincoln’s speeches/writings? We realized it was highly doubtful. Such ideologist don’t want to see, learn or feel history – they want to ignore it.
So, we will continue to visit American historical sites so that our children WILL remember what their ancestors fought and struggled so hard for – freedom.
I lived most of my youth in the State of Georgia, and all over the place there are these bronze plaques describing the battle, skirmish, massacre, and Union and Confederate units which fought there.
It is hard to relate to or even understand how these Americans could have been so fired with emotion to go to war, and a long, brutal, and bloody war, against each other for so long.
It is all so hard to imagine.
-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Thank you to all who remind us of our responsibilities.
In Fredericksburg, VA,where I’m from, the Civil War is still big news. Since there were four major battles fought inand around the town, Fredericksburg, Chancersville, Spottsylvania, and Wilderness, one gets a lot of Civil War history and reacting. Here are some stories:
. there are still bullet holes in some buildings downtown left over from the war.
. Once one of the buildings in downtown was having a basement redug, in the course of it they found a mass of arm and leg bones. Apparently civil War surgeons used the building as a hospital and threw cut off arm and legs into the basement, covered them with dirt and there they lay for over a hundred years.
. I have a mass of civil war artifacts I purchased at yard sales, mainly bullets and pieces of artillery shell but also one saber bayonet (purchased for around$ 2.00).
. In one school class a teacher related that there was one CW grave that was always decorated but no one knew why. A student promptly explained that his father was the groundskeeper at that CW cemetery and related that after the war the parents of the fallen soldier provided money so that their son’s grave would remain decorated. The then groundskeeper put the money in the bank where it grew and allows the grave to remain decorated to this day.
. Reactors once took over downtown Fredericksburg and forced the civilians to get passes. I was forced into the Chimneys restaurant, a pre-CW structure for a Union pass. It was so realistic it was scary. Later I asked my son to go out and make a phone call(this was before cell phones were the rule)and he came back explaining a confederate patrol refused to let through without a pass.
. A co-worker’s ancestor was in Lee’s army at Gettysburg. As he tells it, after the Army fell back to Virginia it turned left, his ancestor turned right.
.the Confederate yell is still given alive and well and passed down through families.
The cavalry failed the Confederates; they should have taken the high ground around Cemetery ridge before the Union troops got there. Lee should not have assumed that the Union artillery had stopped shelling because it was out of action. Picket never forgave Lee for losing his regiment. It is absolutely true that the battle was fought using outdated tactics- just like at the battle of the Somme where troops were ordered to march slowly toward the German machine guns. Perhaps we are waging current wars with old-fashioned tactics
Dr.Rubin,
Happy 4th of July. I took my family (my wife and 4 young teen or pre-teen kids) in July 2007 to Gettysburg. There was a re-enactors encampment and they were very generous in giving their time to show my kids around, so I thank you and your friends for maintaining living history.
Could you please list a few favorite Gettysburg and Civil War books?
“No number of history books can explain the Civil War better than standing in a double line, shoulders touching, while a similar group 200 yards away shoots at you. You can’t run, duck, or hide while the other side fires very large bullets at you.”
Well, hopefully you guys aren’t using real bullets. I think that would be carrying the re-enactment thing a little too far.
early in each December, there is an illumination at the Antietam battlefield. Adult and youth service organizations (Scouts) place candle luminaries in straight (as straight as pre-teens ans teens aided by non-surveyor dads and some moms can manage) rows across the northern and central sections of the battlefield. As evening falls, the candles are lit. The glow of the luminaries, one for each of approx 23,000 casualties killed, wounded, or missing, from the bloodiest 1-day in American history, is a moving sight. And it brings home to the boys (and us adults, too) just how big a number 23,000 is when they see field after field, covered in candles.
http://www.nps.gov/anti/planyourvisit/luminary.htm
Aside on tactics – in April, we met a man descended from a Italian Jew who served (he said) in the “Garibaldi Brigade” with other immigrants who had fought in the Italian civil wars. He said they almost mutinied over the Army’s tactics of massed formations, they preferred what was probably more of a skirmisher formation. Don’t know if the story is true, but it’s consistent with your re-enactor experience.
I have been to Gettysburg five or six times. The first time I saw Barry Rubin’s photograph on this page, I thought it sure looked very Civil Warish. Now I realize that was no accident. A man of any age….